Tag: Philadelphia

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A gunman ambushed 33-year old Philadelphia police officer Jesse Hartnett on Thursday night. His attacker is in custody and claims it was an attempted “execution” in the name of Islam.

CBS News in Philadelphia reports Hartnett was sitting in his patrol car at around 11:30 PM when the attacker fired 13 shots through the driver’s side window at point-blank range. The CBS report describes the shooter as walking toward the police car while he fired. Three of the shots struck Hartnett’s arm. His injuries do not appear to be life-threatening.

“Shots fired! I’m shot! I’m bleeding heavily!” Hartnett called out on police radio, as can be heard in the CBS report:.

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Hartnett was able to return fire, and hit the as-yet unnamed suspect three times. Other offices swiftly caught the wounded assailant while attempting to flee the scene, and he has made a full confession, according to CBS. The confession reportedly describes Islam as part of the motive for the attack.

Commissioner Ross said there is video of the entire attack. “This is absolutely one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen,” he declared. “I mean, this guy tried to execute the police officer. The officer had no idea he was coming. It’s amazing he’s alive.”

The shooter is described as a male in his 30s. According to a news description of the surveillance video, he was wearing a “long white frock and black pants” as he approached the police cruiser with his gun drawn. The current condition of the shooter has not been disclosed at the time of this writing.

Ross said Hartnett suffered “significant damage” to his arm, including nerve damage, but is awake and coherent. According to the New York Daily News, he underwent surgery early Friday at Presbyterian Hospital and is expected to make a full recovery.

NJ.com cites Officer Hartnett’s social media profiles to describe him as a native of East Landsdowne, Pennsylvania, who attended Delaware County Community College, served in the U.S. Coast Guard for over a decade, and then became a four-year veteran of the police force.

CBS News reported late Friday morning that the FBI has become involved in the investigation.

Update, 11:05 AM EST: ABC News has published images of the attacker, from the surveillance video:

Update, 1:15 PM: According to Commissioner Ross, the attacker pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

Also, the gun used in the attack was reportedly stolen, which will be bad news for those who were frantically looking for a way to fold the incident into their gun-control narratives.

Update, 1:45 PM: Philly.com has some more details about Edward Archer, courtesy of his mother:.

Reached at her home in Lansdowne, his mother, Valerie Holliday, said Archer was the eldest of seven children and suffered head injuries from playing football and a moped accident.

“He’s been acting kind of strange lately. He’s been talking to himself… laughing and mumbling,” Holliday said. “He’s been hearing voices in his head. We asked him to get medical help.”

She said her son is devout Muslim who has practiced the faith “for a long time.”

“He’s going through a lot lately,” Holliday said, adding Archer believed he was targeted by police.

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There are some good reasons the police might have “targeted” Edward:.

Archer was scheduled to be sentenced Monday in a Delaware County case, according to court records. He was found guilty in a November nonjury trial of forging documents, careless driving, driving with a suspended or revoked license and other related offenses.

In Philadelphia, he was sentenced in March to nine to 23 months in jail and two years probation in an assault case. He was charged with aggravated assault, conspiracy, firearms offenses and terroristic threats for a January 2012 incident but pleaded guilty to simple assault.

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Here’s a thought: maybe we should put more effort into enforcing existing laws, rather than passing a boatload of new ones. Of course, the existing laws involve difficult duties such as catching and imprisoning violent criminals, and protecting the nation from terrorist threats – both of which are pursuits that often infuriate the cult of political correctness.

It’s much easier to pass new laws that either do nothing of substance, or involve pushing around decent law-abiding taxpayers. Telling a rape victim she shouldn’t have a gun to defend herself is far easier than keeping someone imprisoned for assault.

Philly.com also tells us a bit more about the wounded Officer Jesse Hartnett, hailed as a “true hero” by fellow officers. He actually got out of his car and pursued the suspect on foot, after getting sprayed with 13 bullets and taking three hits in the arm. His father Robert described Hartnett as “a very quality young man.” On that, I think we can all agree.

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If you ask a concealed handgun permit holder why they choose to carry a concealed weapon all of the time, they’ll sometimes dryly reply that it’s because criminals are rarely considerate enough to put their deadly crimes on the intended victim’s calendar.

Such was the case in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania yesterday, when a man with a concealed carry permit heard gun shots as he passed by a barbershop, ran in, and stopped a massacre in the making by shooting a man who had opened fire on employees and customers:

Police say a man likely saved the lives of several people when he shot and killed a gunman inside a West Philadelphia barbershop.

A 40-year-old man was inside Falah Barber Shop Inc. on the 600 block of Preston Street shortly before 3 p.m. Sunday when police say he began fighting with another person inside.

“They were arguing,” said 16-year-old Yusaf Mack who was a customer inside the shop at the time. “They were taking it too far and one of the barbers said, ‘chill out.’”

The fight quickly escalated and the 40-year-old man took out his gun and opened fire on customers and barbers, police said.

“I heard gunshots so I ducked and I ran,” said Mack.

As he was shooting, another man outside heard the gunfire, ran into the shop and took out his own gun, according to investigators. He then opened fire, striking the 40-year-old man once in the chest.

The man who had started shooting at customers and staff in the barbershop was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, where he died of his injuries.

The concealed carry permit holder turned himself in at a local police precinct after the shooting, and Philadelphia police are conducting a formal investigation. Early indications are that the permit holder likely saved “a lot of people.”

As a general rule, citizens have the right to defend their lives and the lives of others against immediate and proximate deadly force attacks.

No charges are expected to be filed against the concealed carry permit holder.

A man was fatally shot outside a Philadelphia concert being held to promote peace and stem violence in the city, police said Thursday.

The shooting happened at about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday outside the Dell Music Center in the city’s Fairmount Park, according to investigators.

Officials said the 20-year-old man was apparently either arriving at or leaving the “Philly Support Philly: Peace on the Streets” concert when he got into an argument with someone in the parking lot.

While this is absolutely tragic, the reaction from the Philly Police Commissioner is telling of the state of crime in the City of Brotherly Love:

Police commissioner Charles Ramsey told reporters that such a shooting outside an event aimed at stemming violence comes as no surprise.

“People who put on these concerts are well-intentioned,” Ramsey said. “The problem is, it doesn’t always reach the street thugs that we deal with on a daily basis. This is what they do, and they don’t care if it’s at a peace rally, in church – they could care less.”

“So I’m not frustrated and I’m not surprised,” he said.

No word yet if there have been any arrests made in this case. However, police will be checking surveillance video in order to identify a suspect.

The American Pale Stout, which has been dubbed Dock Street Walker, is made with malted wheat, oats, flaked barley, cranberry and an extra-special ingredient – smoked goat brains.

“The pre-sparge-brain-addition provides this beer with intriguing, subtle smoke notes,” the brewery says in a press release. “In true walker fashion, don’t be surprised if its head doesn’t hang around forever.

The beverage, which Dock Street Brewing Company is calling “quite possibly the smartest beer you’ll ever drink,” will be released on Sunday before “The Walking Dead” season finale.

This isn’t the first time a brewery has crafted a beer in honor of an AMC drama.

Marble Brewery in Albuquerque, N.M., made two “Breaking Bad” brews in honor of the series’ finale in August. However, those didn’t contain any unusual show-related ingredients.

Ten members of a Philadelphia ironworkers union are charged with conspiring to commit extortion, arson, destruction of property, and assault to force construction contractors to hire union workers, according to the FBI.

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The FBI this week said the members of Ironworkers Local 401 collaborated with allies who sought out construction sites that employed non-union workers, threatening personnel there with “violence, destruction of property or other criminal acts unless union members were hired.”

So-called “goon squads,” including a group calling itself “The Helpful Union Guys” (or THUGs) went into action. Some “set a crane on fire and cut steel beams and colts” at a Quaker Meeting House construction site in 2012, according to the indictment. In 2010, union members assaulted non-union workers with baseball bats at another construction site.

In 2013, they “threatened the contractor of an apartment complex… if he did not hire Local 401 members,” the indictment said. As a result, “the contractor relinquished his profits and turned the job over to a union-affiliated contractor.”

Experts say such incidents go both underreported and unprosecuted. National Institute for Labor Relations Research has documented over 9,000 reports of union violence since 1975, of which “barely 3 percent… have led to an arrest and conviction.”

The institute noted that in many cases, police and company reports “indicate that the actual number of assaults, threats and property damage is tens of times greater than the news reports collected” document.

In the Ironworkers Local 401 case, four of the 10 defendants face minimum prison sentences of 35 years if convicted of all charges.

The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations of widespread cheating among teachers and principals in Philadelphia schools, according to people with knowledge of the inquiry.

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State prosecutors acted after receiving information from the state Inspector General’s Office, which launched its own investigation in 2011.

News of the criminal probe, which one source said involves a grand jury, comes as 138 educators have been implicated in a citywide scandal. The revelation comes a day after three Philadelphia school principals were fired for alleged cheating. The School Reform Commission removed the principals as of Friday, and officials said further investigation and more discipline was to come.

Allegations of cheating in Philadelphia schools first surfaced in 2011, involving 53 district schools and three city charter schools.

In recent years, testing scandals have erupted in Washington; Cincinnati; Baltimore; Detroit; Houston; Los Angeles; and Newark, N.J., among other cities.

Since 2009, cheating has been confirmed in 37 states and Washington.

The Philadelphia scandal has drawn comparisons to one in Atlanta, where last year a Fulton County grand jury indicted 35 educators, including Beverly Hall, a former school superintendent. The allegations touched at least 44 schools.

Administrators, principals, and teachers were charged with racketeering, conspiracy, making false statements, and related offenses.

Six former Atlanta principals and teachers recently pleaded guilty to cheating offenses, bringing the number of pleas to 17. Prosecutors say Hall was a leader, driven by bonuses and federal funding tied to better test results.

The testing scandals have fueled a debate over using high-stakes classroom tests to judge the performance of teachers, administrators, and schools. In Atlanta, some teachers who cheated blamed extreme pressure to meet district goals.

Robert McGrogan, head of the union that represents Philadelphia school administrators, said he does not condone cheating under any circumstances. But, he said, during the years of the alleged cheating, the district was a pressure cooker.

“Do you know how many of us sat in meetings with our bosses and were told, ‘You have to bring your scores up’?” said McGrogan, a principal at the time. “There was no how-to book given to us.”

Supervisors warned principals that if they did not meet state standards, “you’re not going to be a principal next year,” McGrogan said.

On Friday, Mayor Nutter said that while the scandal reveals “immoral behavior,” the district had made legitimate improvement in recent years.

Bennett was principal of Cassidy Elementary, but had been a teacher leader at Huey Elementary. Burns, the principal of Kensington Urban Education Academy, had been principal at Tilden Middle. Travis-Curtis was principal of Lamberton Elementary.

Efforts to reach the three were unsuccessful.

City school officials said Friday that their own investigations into allegations of cheating were continuing.

In 2011, The Inquirer reported that dramatic test-score gains that began in 2009 appeared to have been achieved partly through cheating at Roosevelt Middle School in East Germantown.

The 53 schools that have been investigated for possible cheating – one in five of all district schools – come from every part of the city and span every grade level. Some had been labeled “Vanguards,” a Philadelphia School District designation for its highest-achieving schools, and one that gave them flexibility in curriculum and budgeting.

A state-commissioned analysis of 2009 exams identified suspicious patterns of erasures at schools across Pennsylvania. Later, staffers and parents at Cayuga Elementary in Hunting Park told The Inquirer of cheating there.

The state Inspector General’s Office later conducted investigations at 11 district schools – the “Tier I” schools, or those with the most serious allegations. The district investigated 19 Tier II schools and has yet to probe 22 Tier III schools.

Sixty-nine current and former employees were implicated in the highest-level, most serious investigations, School District attorney Jessica Diaz said, but discipline against them cannot proceed until the state releases its investigations to the district.

Of the 19 Tier II schools probed, three were cleared, no conclusion could be drawn at three, and cheating was found at 13.

Forty current district employees and 29 former employees were implicated. Twenty were administrators, 46 were teachers, and three worked in other capacities, including as counselors and a police officer.

But that’s not all. A Philadelphia tavern the founding fathers used to frequent, that is owned by the federal government but operated by a private contractor, has been ordered to close its doors. It stayed open during the last shutdown, and had to cancel hundreds of reservations. Why shut down an operation that makes money?

It is not clear how much taxpayer money the Obama administration is paying to ensure that government sites and services remain shuttered to taxpayers. Popular Washington spots such as the World War II memorial are now guarded by more security personnel than they are during normal operations, while federal employees have been dispatched to put up barricades on capital bike paths and other public grounds that are not usually patrolled at all.

Obama’s team has also been caught deliberately punishing World War II veterans trying to visit their own memorial, with one administration official telling a veteran’s supporter, “It’s a government shutdown, what do you expect?”

The American people are currently paying for eight mounted cops to keep people out of the World War II memorial. (Read More)

What do we expect? We expect a president that doesn’t act like a spoiled child not getting his way. But that’s what we get with this one. He’s a petty and vindictive little man.

It is all about blaming Republicans, and reaping political gains, and nothing more. Petty indeed!